


Chasing Horizons

by Wanderlust3988



Series: To The Left Of Elysian [3]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Drabble, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Marriage, New Year's Eve, New Year's Fluff, One Shot, Romance, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-25 23:28:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13223493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wanderlust3988/pseuds/Wanderlust3988
Summary: Seto couldn’t understand your obsession with the last stars of the year or first sunrise of the year; especially when they all paled in comparison to you.





	Chasing Horizons

**Author's Note:**

> A little New Year’s drabble / one shot fic. This is set in the same universe as that ‘If you want romance/ boys are only perfect’ series. We are still in summer for the series right now and so I wrote this short fic to skip forward to winter and end of the year. It was something quick I threw together, and so I hope you enjoy. I didn’t include any spoilers! 
> 
> Happy New Year!

 

The party presently occupying the most opulent ballroom at the manor was not his idea; it had been his brother’s, and he had been severely opposed to it.

He occupied himself in watching two things; the holographic, silver, gold and onyx fireworks blooming and withering under the domed glass roof, and you. Everything beyond was inconsequential, and therefore he blatantly ignored them.

The susurrus of taffeta and the crunch of sequins, along with the shrill, contrived laughter which escaped the women who wore them were all grating his nerves. The woman on his arm, nor the iridescent ring on her fourth finger, glinting under the chandelier light it captured, seemed to discourage them. They all continued to rush at him in waves...

“...Like moths to a flame,” you completed his mental sentence in an irascible whisper.

“Exactly,” Seto concurred. He should have been unsurprised by how well you read his cues.

Granddaughters and daughters of his board directors, mostly; they knew no boundaries, the lipstick wearing, chattering monkeys donning inappropriate hemlines.

Admittedly, your lipstick was the brightest shade of scarlet, your silver fringed, flapper dress, with a wreath of crystal embellishing the chest, and crystal accents over the waist, the shortest, and yet he was mesmerized by how every thread on every tier caught the light as you moved, as if you were constructed entirely of bursting stardust.

He couldn’t fathom a more unproductive way to spend his New Year’s Eve.

Your dress would have looked much better on his floor.

“I could be having my way with you right now,” Seto husked in your ear, leaning in.

A shudder assaulted your composure, and you swallowed your lips before responding.

“I don’t understand why you aren’t,” you told your husband. You had meant that with complete sincerity, despite what your playful undertone may have implied. “Our bedroom isn’t that far away,” you purred, “or the ground floor library if you can’t wait that long. You like it there.”

Indeed he did.

He chortled, “And these are the words of the National Fairy.”

“Save that for when you’re taking my clothes off,” you murmured, your fingers not wrapped around the stem of your lipstick stained champagne flute, dancing up the sleeve of his black tux.

This was enough fuel - not that he had needed persuasion - and without so much as a parting remark, he ripped you away from his group of admirers, much to the disappointment - and ire - of the swooning ladies.

Your escape had seemed successful until you reached the grand entrance of the ballroom, guarded by a familiar face; his mane of bristled, ebony contrasting starkly his polished, white tuxedo.

“Nah-uh,” he forbade in a sing-song tone, “you two promised you would stick around till the clock struck midnight.”

“Do I look like Cinderella to you, Mokuba?” the elder Kaiba grunted, his waffled grip on your hand tightening.

“Oh come on,” you chimed, pressing yourself against your husband’s arm, “we’ll come back before the New Year. You won’t even notice we are gone.”

Seto had some choice words for the offer, though he elected to reveal them under his breath; for the greater part inaudible to your height.

“Could you two get a room?” Mokuba whined, expression souring with discomfort and unrestrained repulsion.

“That’s kind of what we’re trying to do,” Seto announced smugly.

The younger’s face flushed a concentrated green.

“Okay ew.”

“What?” Seto smirked. “You said it, not me.”

“You know what, no.” Mokuba grew resolute, shaking his head; untamed tresses a whirlwind about him. “I know you two, or more specifically, I know my brother.” He narrowed his eyes in unambiguous accusation. “If I let you go now, I’ll be seeing her next year, literally. And if I’m lucky, you’ll return him with your red lipstick all over him. Making my big brother look presentable is not how I plan to spend the last few moments of this year.”

“I’m taking that as a compliment,” the elder laughed.

Mokuba’s face wrinkled at the insinuation of his brother’s performance.

“Okay, Seto, that’s gross, and I didn’t need that mental image.”

“You could easily relieve yourself if you let us go.”

“Lock the doors and don’t let these two out,” the younger Kaiba spoke into his handheld transceiver he’d been - overbearingly, if you might add - instructing the mansion staff through all evening.

“You can’t hold me a prisoner of my own house,” Seto barked, but the suave young man had already whisked off like a spinning top, down the steps leading to the ballroom floor, disappearing into the throng of bodies writhing in cashmere and satin.

“Would you like to dance?” you asked your husband in consolation.

“What do you think?”

You weren’t inviting him to the waltz, so his response should have been expected, after all, the man had never heard a song he’d liked, especially not by any idol. You imagined the genre of music his brother had chosen for the night was ravaging his ears. Still, it was mildly insulting to see him shun your artists.

Evidently, the posted guards or footmen weren’t the dilemma, it was the impish runt, who upon foiling your third attempt to flee the party resorted to underhanded tactics; his charcoal pupils dilated and his eyes inflated three sizes, his Cheshire grin upsetting to a quivering frown. His ability to summon tears upon will while commendable, was severely ire inspiring once you discovered your usually dispassionate husband was not immune.

Another handful of hours dawdled by; an additional crease wrinkling your husband’s face with each quarter hour, as if to mark that time. Seto’s scowl was unforgiving, and he had withdrawn from speaking to even you, all queries directed at him callously ignored.

You were convinced some time soon his clenched fingers would shatter his champagne stem.

Every so often he would roll the sleeve of his suit jacket, and read the time with severe eyes. At quarter to midnight he had decided he had endured more than what was justifiable; anymore and he would be a madman.

Slipping your half finished glass of prosecco out of your hand, he set it down on the silver tray of a passing footman.

“Find a way out and meet me by the library,” he ordered, his palm against the small of your back thrusting you forward.

“It’s almost midnight,” you protested, over your shoulder.

“Just do it,” were his last words to you before turning, and disappearing into the tide of intoxicated socialites behind him.

...

On his way out, Seto was confronted by his younger brother, demanding explanation for his bid to depart. The last he checked, needing to use the bathroom was not a crime, he had said, to which the younger could think no sensible defence. Convincing his younger sibling that he had left his wife somewhere in the fray, he slipped out, greeting the solitude of the silent hallway, only disturbed by the muffled clamour of the booming bass and feverish guests.

He had forgotten the sensation of inspiring air that was cold.

Seven minutes to midnight, he rendezvoused with you before the old, French library. Draped his forearm was a decorative blanket. You questioned, though he refused to afford you clarity.

You wrapped your hand around the carved, brass appendage; finding a larger hand draping over yours.

“Somewhere else,” he vaguely apprised, seizing your hand and setting off in the opposite direction.

At the conclusion of five floors and ten conquered flights of stairs; a small set of Tiffany blue doors under a moulded arch of limestone. All the walls were constructed of limestone, you observed, on this floor, even the wreaths of floral moulding. You had never had the occasion to venture this far up. The floor tiles were a chessboard of ivory and ash blue marble, contrasting greatly the black and gilded railings.

Unlocking the silver chain, he twisted one small, golden knob.

It was much less spectacular than you had been hoping for; a dusty attic.

Rightfully, you conveyed your perplexity.

“It’s what’s past the attic, you simple minded child,” he scolded, drawing you by the hand into the realm of cobwebs and three inch thick dust. You assumed this fell beyond the jurisdiction of the maid-staff.

Apparently there existed a universal rule - one you were blissfully unaware of - that in every secluded attic, there must exist a painted, toy, rocking horse tucked away in a corner. You crystal heels unleashed storms of dust, leaving imprints in their wake each time they met the groaning wooden floorboards.

Moonlight stole in through a clouded window to your right, lifting the obscurity shrouding the unlit room with ghostly, blue veils. The contents of the room were unremarkable for the greater part, serving as a forgotten archive of soiled documents housed in incomprehensibly labelled boxes and a warehouse for limbs of old furniture; dismembered beds and armchairs with their woven seats ravaged by rodents. There were no portraits; all the empty picture frames nurturing spiders and their humble webs. One thing of note however, was an antique camera, possibly as old as the early nineteen hundreds; it’s face and accordion like body, marred by the passage of time and dust. It stood beside a gilded stand, by what appeared to be a movie projector which time had again made obsolete. It was strange to discover items from such an analogous era in this young president’s residence.

By the far wall coiled a metallic staircase, it’s rusted railings beyond salvation, the once-blue steps bore floral carvings.

“Watch your step,” Seto advised, leading you.

Dancing in dust was not how you had imagined greeting the New Year.

Beyond the staircase was a narrow passageway, punctuated with skylights. The slanted walls afforded no room to stand, and hardly room to kneel for your husband.

“Remind me why we’re here.”

“My brother is more persistent than you would think,” he divulged. “Take off your heels,” he ordered, grappling the brass hooks which had seemingly grown too fond of their window frame over years of neglect, to part, “the roof tiles may be loose.”

“Roof tiles?” you exclaimed, undoing your silver ankle straps.

“Yes,” he simply returned, offering you his hand, one foot mounted up on the window ledge.

Accepting it, he presented to you a sky full of opaline stars; the winter sky dusted with silver shavings. The glittery canvas faded into the silhouette of a grove of evergreens and bushy oaks.

The tiled roof was unsteady, and you may have displaced several charcoal tiles as you settled. While the daunting prospect of tumbling five stories to your imminent end existed, the shallow inclination of the roof made it unlikely.

The night had been cold to begin with, and the raised elevation left you vulnerable to the assault of the humming wind. Suddenly the purpose of the blanket made perfect sense, as he swathed the heavy cover around your exposed legs. When he burdened your prickled shoulders with his suit jacket, you protested, though he was inexorable.

“Fifteen seconds,” he announced, appraising his watch past his gathered shirt sleeve.

Unravelling a corner of the blanket, you draped it over his legs. He offered you a quizzical brow.

“Compromise,” you told him, beaming.

Leaning in to his arm, you watched over the needle-like hand run across the onyx face of his gold Rolex to meet the stroke of midnight.

In the distance, a roar of voices chanted elusive words at regular intervals. They drowned under the heavy tolls of a faraway clock tower, its chimes weaving through the bare branches of the courtyard and iridescent fireworks, dancing with the stars like phosphenes. They blossomed above your heads, just out of touch, in every shade of crystal blue, peach pink and peacock green, ultraviolet and brilliant whites.

“Happy New Year,” you murmured, reaching to kiss his cheek.

Your lips grazed his face before he turned, laying you supine over the roof tiles with urgency, capturing them with his own. Warmth spread through your cold skin from where his warm lips claimed yours.

Parting, cerulean galaxies darted between your eyes, his arms caging you. He wouldn’t tell you that he was trying to memorize you, exactly as you were in that moment; your blushing face a mirror for a kaleidoscope of luminous light, your eyes flickering with innocence he’d forgotten but had sworn to protect. In his eyes you were ethereal.

All these stars stitched to the fabric of the universe, and he still wished to look at nothing but you.

As he lifted away, sitting up by your side, you were curious, “Do you have any New Year’s resolutions?” you posed in question.

“No,” he gruffly spurned, “I don’t believe in those ridiculous notions.”

“That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?” You huddled against him to steal more of his warmth, for which he seemed to be an unexpendable source.

“You should know me better,” he disagreed. “A new year can’t miraculously inspire and transform someone at the stroke of midnight. If someone truly desired change, they could achieve it any day of the year, but they don’t, so a change in their calendar can’t hope to do much to help the worthless fools. They will inevitably regress to their lethargic ways as the year progresses, amounting to mediocrity if they’re lucky as they go about mundane lives.”

“Yes I should be well versed with your pessimism by now, it will be my life-long companion.”

“Don’t mock me with Austen.”

“You seem appalled,” you laughed, biting your lower lip. “Why, would you rather me reference Tolstoy while insulting you?” He would say nothing. “Ah...silence,” you drawled, “another dear companion of mine.”

“Stop it.” So you did. “Do you?” He seemed to struggle to conform to the social construct of returning the question. “Do you have a resolution?”

“I may mock you for it but I don’t believe in the concept of resolutions either. I believe in the act fortifying my resolution to follow lifelong principles.”  
  
“Which would be?”

“For example,” you mused, humming, “doing my best to guard this marriage.”

“You’re so cloyingly melodramatic.”

“And you’re tedious,” you retorted.

“And this is how you hope to do that? By arguing with me first thing in the New Year?”

“I plan to make you laugh Seto,” you insisted, “keep you alive long enough to annoy you with my company.”

A ghost of a smile on his lips betrayed his stern countenance.

“You’re already annoying me.”

“And you wouldn’t have it any other way.”

He chose not to dispute that.

You allowed your face to fall towards the firmament, tranquil now in the absence of fireworks, winter’s breath nipping at your tingling skin.

You called the stars pretty, and he broke into a lecture on all the constellations embellishing the winter sky and their purpose, disputing that they weren’t merely pretty, as if merely praising it for its beauty was an insult. You added to his convoluted disquisition with the tale of Orion and Artemis and their star crossed fates at the hands of Artemis’s brother, Apollo. Having listened to your story, he only remarked how if there ever was a single example which would perfectly embody your juxtaposing perceptions, that this would be it; scientific pragmatism perpetually at odds with a world interpreted through a romanticized lens. You contested that they complimented what the other lacked. Again, he found himself unable to dispute that.

Conversation filled the dawn hours, one surely continuing when the other stopped, while comfortable silence filled everything in between; your wandering gaze drifting between the stars stitched to the sky and him. With each instance your eyes flickered back to him, the stars seem to pale in comparison. His gaze never strayed.

Your conversations distorted your perception of time, until eventually your husband remarked that it was past four thirty in the morning. You were convinced it had only been minutes, though of course, you had no authority over a perfectly functioning watch on the topic of time.

It was then you realized that it had not been your imagination that the stars were beginning to fade, early morning stealing their stage.

“It would be nice to watch the first sunrise of the year together,” you told him, now completely surrounded by him, the cold stealing in through the fabric of your garments.

“That could be hours from now.” He shifted under you, retrieving his phone. “Almost three and a half hours. The sunrise is at six fifty-one to be exact,” he declared, having confirmed. “You’ll catch a cold. I’m taking you inside.”

“What’s life without a little risk and whimsy?”

“Catching a cold isn’t a risk nor whimsy, it’s a definitive if you stay out here.”

Your laughter lifted into the air with the blowing wind.

“Please? I’ve never had anyone to do this with.”

“Don’t look at me with those eyes,” he chided, though he yielded quite easily under them.

...

Laying under the lace of wilting stars, you had fallen asleep. He pressed your face tainted a severe crimson against his chest, shielding your reddened ears with his palm.

He poured hot breath over his palms, wondering why he had even entertained such a ridiculous idea for you, feeling a light headache pulse against the base of his neck under chilled skin.

Eventually dawn blushed the horizon, painting the world around him in hues of mauve and lavender.

“Wake up.” Seto roused you gently.

You opened your eyes to rose gold bleeding into a quiet, violet sky beyond a grove of maples and oaks. It has first been a thin line, sewn between the earth and the sky. Smoky clouds hung like garlands in the horizon, soon to be dyed gold. The rest of the world followed in their wake, soft shadows creeping from the manicured mazes on the grassy courtyard below.

Against your ear, you could feel his breath break in waves.

“Happy now?” his hoarse voice inquired from above. He couldn’t hope to comprehend your obsession with sunrises, only that childlike mirth fizzled like tonic in yours eyes whenever you saw them. He couldn’t comprehend the beauty in sunrises but he was mesmerized by you.

“So so happy,” you cooed. “Only, it’s disappointing that it’s over. I wish they lasted longer.”

“Would you like to see it again?”

“How can I see the year’s first sunrise twice? Even if you did record it - ”

“I didn’t record it,” he interrupted, “but I can show it to you again.”

“Seto, as rich as you are, you still can’t afford to manipulate the sun.”

“There’s nothing I can’t afford,” your husband laughed. “Nothing.”

Peering up at his indicolite orbs you were bewildered.

  
“Most of the world still hasn’t seen their first sunrise,” he explained, “and I can take you to see all of them.”

“You’re suggesting we chase daybreak,” you begged for clarification, incredulous, “chase every sunrise.”

“Precisely.”

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think! 
> 
> For anyone confused, he means with his blue eye jet.
> 
> Her dress (to the left): https://pin.it/36rveisqyk5tb2  
> Ballroom: https://pin.it/ikccqipdexpm5u  
> Attic: https://pin.it/2ikl72m6yckpdk  
> Staircase: https://pin.it/jl5qx4rufix5sa


End file.
